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On Holy Thursday the first day of the Easter Triduum you might think that in the Catholic church the primary Gospel reading might concerning the Holy Eucharist even that this this is the day in which the Eucharist was inaugurated.

You would be wrong:

This is the Gospel reading on Holy Thursday every year taken directly from the site of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

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Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.
He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end. The devil had already induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand him over.

So, during supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, 
“Master, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.”
Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Simon Peter said to him, 
“Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and head as well.”
Jesus said to him, “Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over; so you are clean, but not all.”
For he knew who would betray him;
for this reason, he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

So when he had washed their feet 
and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, 
he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you?
You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’  and rightly so, for indeed I am.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, 
you ought to wash one another’s feet.
I have given you a model to follow, 
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

John 13 1-15

Notice that the focus of this entire gospel is the idea that it is the job of the disciples to serve. They are the princes of the church but their primary duty is to serve the people who they shall bring to the fold.

One may debate how successful they and their successors have been in this regard but there is no question that the primary job of the clergy from your local parish priest to the Bishop to the Cardinals and to the Holy Father is to be of service to the people to guide them to that narrow path of salvation.

In government this is much the same, particularly in a republic there is the idea that those in office are there to serve the people and not only those but them who are working in government bureaucracy. It is no accident that such people are called “Civil Servants”.

This is one of the reason why Donald Trump was such an effective president because the office actually cost him lots in terms of money and reputation yet the people did better socially and economically under him. As the book of Proverbs says:

By justice a king gives stability to the land; but he who imposes heavy taxes ruins it.

Proverbs 29:4

It’s is also why the deep state of the Bureaucracy and those who seek wealth power and prestige from office opposed him so. We have an administration that seems more concerned with the interested than with even the real people who voted for him or the state of the cities where Biden voters live. And you know what Proverbs talks about that too:

When the wicked prevail, crime increases; but their downfall the just will behold.

Proverbs 29:16

And that’s not even discussing the revolving door of wealth whose return is the main reason why the deep state wanted Trump out.

If one wants to get the idea of how this revolving door works I can’t think of a better example than this exchange from the Christmas Special of Yes Minister which became the pilot for the series “Yes Prime Minister” where the power Cabinet secretary Sir Arnold is talking to Sir Humphrey in a private meeting noting that he has decided to retire and is now considering who will be his successor:

Sir Arnold: You see, in this job, the problem isn’t really finding the answers it’s finding the questions. We need the man who can find the key question.

Sir Humphrey: By the way, Arnold, to change the subject completely, what will you be doing when you retire?

Sir Arnold: Ah, very good question! Very good question.

Sir Humphrey: It’s just that there might be jobs you could pick up, Er, ways you could serve the country, which your successor whoever he might be could put your way, er, persuade you to undertake!

Sir Arnold: Well I had been giving it some thought. Well as you know I’ll be chairman of the Banque Occidentale and there’ll be directorships of IBM and BP and that sort of thing. But I was thinking…

Sir Humphrey: Yes?
Sir Arnold: Well the Chairmanship of the Opera House trust will be coming up next year
Sir Humphrey: Chairman of Covent Garden…

Sir Arnold: And the chancellorship of Oxford.

Sir Humphrey: um hm
Sir Arnold: And then the deputy chairmanship of the Bank of England would be a…
Sir Humphrey: …A challenge?

Sir Arnold: A challenge, exactly. And head of the Security Commission. And the presidency of The Anglo-Caribbean Association would give one…
Sir Humphrey: …a chance to be of service.
Sir Arnold: Precisely! Especially during the winter months.
Sir Humphrey: Well I’m sure that any successor worth his salt could arrange these Arnold.
Sir Arnold: You think so? That’s very reassuring, very reassuring.

As you might guess Sir Humphrey gets the job. Later on in the show the sitting Prime minister also announces his retirement and at lunch Sir Arnold and Sir Humphrey are having lunch and the subject comes up that the two candidates within the party are both problematic as they might interfere by actually wanting to run the government:

Sir Arnold: So, will the new PM be our eminent Chancellor or our distinguished Foreign Secretary?

Sir Humphrey: Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Which do you think it should be?

Sir Arnold: Difficult. Like asking which lunatic should run the asylum.

Sir Humphrey: The Trouble is, they’re both interventionists they both have foolish notions of running the county themselves if they became Prime Minister.

Sir Arnold: Have we any allies?
Sir Humphrey: Quite a few, the Chief Whip particularly. And He’s worried that who gets the job will antagonize the other’s supporters and split the party.

Sir Arnold: So we’re looking for a compromise candidate.
Sir Humphrey: Hmm. Malleable.
Sir Arnold: Flexible.

Sir Humphrey: Likeable.
Sir Arnold: No firm opinions.

Sir Humphrey: No bright ideas.
Sir Arnold: Not intellectually committed.

Sir Humphrey: Without the strength of purpose to change anything.
Sir Arnold: Someone who can be manipulated, professionally guided.
Sir Humphrey: And leave the business of government in the hands of the experts.

At the end of that exchange they look at each other both thinking of the main character of the series: (Jim Hacker the minister of the department of administrative affairs and laugh uncontrollably) before deciding that’s it’s possible.

As I’ve given up Youtube for Lent I can’t imbed the video but I challenge you to find that scene online, watch it and not immediately seeing them thinking of Joe Biden as their man for the White House at that moment.

One of the things that often confuse people is the transition from the Lenten season of the Church to the Easter Season. Most people treat lent as running to Easter Sunday or at least till the Easter Vigil mass (the longest mass of the year) on Saturday after sundown.

The reality is actually that in between Lent and Easter there consists the shortest season of the church year the Easter Triduum consisting of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday

Now because of this there are some people who will end their Lenten vows on Thursday or Thursday evening (since in ancient Judaism the day ended at sundown which is why you have vigil masses). Depending on what was being given up and such people are following the letter of the law.

The problem with the letter of the law is that the Easter Triduum is actual the most solemn season of the church. You have the trial, torture. crucifixion and death of Christ.

I don’t think you can get more solemn than that.

That being the case I think that it’s more appropriate to wait until Easter to lift any restrictions one has placed on oneself because while one might be following the letter of the law one might also wish to follow the spirit of the law.

And that brings us to Holy Trinity Church in Dallas and the case of Deirdre Hariston a pregnant mother of was at mass during Lent praying after receiving holy communion

Three police officers were waiting for her after she went to Holy Communion at Holy Trinity Church. She was kneeling down and holding her baby when the police officer said she needed to leave the mass.

When Deidre continued to kneel and pray the police officer grabbed her arm and tried to lift her and drag her out of the church. The officer told her she was trespassing — by attending mass!

Deirdre later found out the main pastor ratted her out! The usher was in the background screaming, “Lock her up!”

The police officer then asked her for ID and told her she was going to arrest her.
She was told not to come back to this Catholic Church again.

The degree of clueless here is astounding, particularly given that she had already received communion meaning the mass was practically over not to mention the optics of police removing a woman at prayer from a church, during lent no less and an usher crying for her to be locked up. I mean it’s not like the pastor couldn’t have approached her after mass to talk to her if he had a problem.

But that cluelessness pales before the statement by the Diocese of Dallas which backed up the pastor even though there is not only no mask mandate in Texas but no Mask mandate by the Diocese itself saying in part:

Canon Law grants parishes jurisdiction over their parishes and while the bishops has not mandated masks for every parish he has left the specific details to the pastors of the diocese

Now if the pastor wanted to stress that he desired parishioners to wear a mask he could have approached her quietly after mass rather than calling police on a pregnant mother.

Furthermore it’s my experience that pregnant mothers are exactly the people you want at parishes because without them you have a parish that dies.

In fairness the priest and the diocese have the letter of the law on their side but might I suggest that while this year we are praying with Mark they they might want to re-acquaint themselves with this passage from Matthew

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying,

“The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens (hard to carry) and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.”

Matthew 23:1-4

Pray for the diocese, the priest and for the young lady who I hope will find a parish that will welcome her and her children with open arms.

If you would be quite sure of your salvation, strive to be among the fewest of the few. Do not follow the majority of mankind, but follow those who renounce the world and never relax their efforts day or night so that they may attain everlasting blessedness.

Saint Anselm of Canterbury

One of the dangers that you run into regularly in the church is the idea of targeting Purgatory as your goal.

The argument being that if you don’t think you’re worthy of heaven, which ironically was a state that many saints considered themselves in, aim for purgatory instead as you are much more likely to reach that state first and as eery person in Purgatory eventually makes it to heaven it’s a much workable plan.

This plan has a very large and rather obvious flaw. If you aim for Heaven (which ironically all those saints that I just mentioned who didn’t think themselves worthy of heaven did) and miss. You might just fall into purgatory for a spell, before you get there.

However if you aim for purgatory and miss, Hell awaits.

Why given this fact to so many Catholics think this way. It’s because of the people tend to like their sins. and like a lawyer trying to get his client as close to the line of illegality as he can without crossing it we tend to try to get as close to that line of mortal sin without going over.

Using Augustine famous cry “Lord make me chaste, but not yet.” as a basis for a way of life is like planning your retirement around getting a winning lottery ticket. Yes someone is going to win the lottery but odds are it’s not going to be you. Yes Augustine is now St. Augustine and dwells in heaven with the Lord, but the vast majority of those who delay their repentance will delay too long. As St. Leonard of Port Maurice put it in his famous sermon: “The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved“

Poor souls! How can you run so hastily toward hell? For mercy’s sake, stop and listen to me for a moment! Either you understand what it means to be saved and to be damned for all eternity, or you do not. If you understand and in spite of that, you do not decide to change your life today, make a good confession and trample upon the world, in a word, make your every effort to be counted among the littler number of those who are saved, I say that you do not have the faith. You are more excusable if you do not understand it, for then one must say that you are out of your mind. To be saved for all eternity, to be damned for all eternity, and to not make your every effort to avoid the one and make sure of the other, is something inconceivable.

Now in fact this is the same type of thing we are seeing with the actions of the violent left. In fact the best illustration of this is what happened in Seattle.

As you can see from the footage posted by Andy Ngo, Antifa was busy smashing up a truck with a man inside during the “Freedom Day Parade.” The man exits the vehicle and seems to point a gun at the crowd of Antifa attackers which has, at this point, backed off. He’s soon ordered by an armed and ready police officer to put the gun down and to get on the ground. The distraught man attempts to point to the real offenders, but the officer continues to order him to the ground while ordering everyone else to back away.

Again the left here is coming close to the line in the sight of the police but not crossing it to the point where the man decides he actually has to shoot to defend himself. Police take him into custody (and release him without charges for daring to defend himself and his property when the officers whose job it is to do so refuse to.

The left keeps getting closer and closer to the line and sooner or later they are going to do it without the police nearby or a person being threatened with decide that they don’t care and open fire.

I suspect that once people start shooting back the people who have been vilified for the last decade who are now very heavily armed will not be all that inclined to stop.

Like the person playing dodgem with purgatory the left is playing dodgem with an actual shooting civil war (or more accurate an actual shooting Lincoln County style war) which is likely not going to end well for them, either temporally or eternally.

Personally I’d advice against it.

oh and as Father Z would say: Go to Confession!

More and more the world in general and the left in particular seem to be imitating Monty Python to wit when I heard are secretary of state said this concerning the Wuhan virus:

Secretary of State Tony Blinken was hesitant to say whether the Biden administration plans to take steps to hold China accountable for what he once called a lack of transparency over how the country handled the pandemic early on.

Blinken, who previously said China’s alleged hiding of the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan was a “profound problem,” was pushed on Sunday by CNN’s Dana Bash on whether he believes Beijing should be punished.

Blinken did not give a direct answer and instead said U.S. officials should work to prevent future pandemics and strengthen its relationship with the World Health Organization.

All I could think of was this exchange from the classic comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Sir Lancelot: Sorry. Sorry. You see what I mean? I just get carried away. I’m really most awfully sorry. Sorry! Sorry, everyone.

Guest 1: He’s killed the best man! [guests shouting]

Owner of Swamp Castle: Hold it! Hold it! Please! Hold it! This is Sir Lancelot from the Court of Camelot, a very brave and influential knight, and my special guest here today.

Sir Lancelot: Hello.

Guest 2: He killed my auntie! [guests yelling more]

Owner of Swamp Castle: Please! Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who. 

Like the Biden administration the owner of Swamp Castle expected to gain personal financial advantage from downplaying those deaths.

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Of course Monty Python isn’t the only thing coming to mind these days. For example, Headline:

All FIVE liberal children of evangelical preacher Rev. Rick Joyner denounce their father in stinging NY Times article saying his right-wing views are ‘morally wrong’

Immediately brought to mind this bit of scripture:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’

Matt 10:34-36

The cost for discipleship is a lot higher in an age when the Christianity is frowned upon by those in high position then in the days when it was followed and respected.

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There are some interesting double standards also going on today. For example this press release from the city of Baltimore:

“Today, America’s war on drug users is over in the city of Baltimore. We leave behind the era of tough-on-crime prosecution and zero tolerance policing and no longer default to the status quo to criminalize mostly people of color for addiction. We will develop sustainable solutions and allow our public health partners to do their part to address mental health and substance use disorder,” said State’s Attorney Mosby.

via Gateway Pundit, sounds an awful like this speech from Don Zaluchi during the peace meeting in the classic movie the Godfather:

I also don’t believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn’t do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says “I have powders; if you put up three, four thousands dollar investment, we can make fifty thousands distributing.” so they can’t resist.

I won’t to control it as a business to keep it respectable [slams his hands on the table] I don’t want it near schools. I don’t want it sold to children! That’s an infamia. In my city , we would keep the traffic in the dark people –the colored. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.

The primary difference between the pair is that Don Zaluchi isn’t pretending he’s doing a service for the black community, these people are.

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Of course lately we’ve been seeing a lot of Yes Minister in the things being condemned and not condemned. Take the murder of a 64 year old Lebanese immigrant driving for UBER eats by a pair of girls:

The description of the fatal incident in this NBC News account doesn’t adequately explain the horror of what was captured on cellphone video by an eyewitness who started recording as Anwar was attempting to prevent the teenage girls from stealing the car. Answer was at the driver’s side door of the vehicle, holding onto the wheel, when the carjackers sped off with him hanging out the side of the door. They swerved left, evidently trying to ram him into a lightpole, and then turned right around a corner. The vehicle disappears from sight in the video, then a loud crash is heard. The witness runs down the street and, when he turns the corner, we see the car toppled onto its left side, the two teenage carjackers scrambling out while Anwar’s apparently lifeless body lies on the sidewalk.

Kurt Schlichter asks the obvious question:

Looking for Democrats condemning the murder of an innocent Asian Uber Eats driver.

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) March 27, 2021

Alas it is not to be as the two girls on camera were black and thus any condemnation of this as a Hate Crime might be considered racist as Stacy McCain explains:

Question: Was this a “hate crime”? The two teenage criminals were black, and had no doubt carjacked many other victims before they committed this crime in broad daylight. Were they targeting their victims on a racial basis? There has been a nationwide spree of carjacking in America over the past year, and there is a discernible pattern to these crimes. 

Of course Yes Prime Minister explained this long ago when arguing against the raising of a clergyman to a Bishopric:

Sir Humphrey: And he’s also against oppression and persecution in Africa.

Prime minister James Hacker: So are we

Sir Humphrey: Yes but he’s against them when practiced by black governments as well as white ones.

Prime Minister James Hacker: Oh, so he’s a racist.

Yes Prime Minister The Bishop’s Gambit 1988

Shades of DatechGuy’s 3rd law of media outrage there.